The invention relates to methods, systems and apparatus for financial management software applications; and more particularly, to new methods, systems and apparatus for providing a dynamic account listing in an online financial services system.
Most retail financial institutions, such as banks, investment companies, stock brokers, credit card issuers, and insurance companies, offer online services to their customers/clients (collectively referred to as clients or users) which are accessible by the user through a website provided by the financial institution. The online services range from basic non-transactional features such as reviewing transactions, account balance and statement information, to transactional features such as account to account fund transfers, wire transfers, loan applications, new account applications, bill payment and investment purchase and sale. The online services provided by each financial institution vary from institution to institution.
These online services provide a significant convenience to the user, and are designed to be fairly easy to use. For example, most online banking services websites have online bill pay systems which allow a user to pay bills from various payees through the website provided by the financial institution (or a third party website service provider contracted by the financial institution). Many credit card websites also have online bill pay systems which allow a user to pay bills using the user's credit card account. The online bill pay systems allow a user to view, review, and/or make payments and pay bills to various payees from the user's financial account at the financial institution.
Some of these online financial services websites also allow a user to access account information and perform transactions for multiple accounts. For example, an online banking service may allow a user to link multiple accounts to a single online banking service website. In this way, the user can access account information and perform transactions for each of the linked accounts. Such an online banking service website may allow a user to transfer funds between the linked accounts, make payments to and from the linked accounts, review electronic bills, pay bills from the linked accounts, and other possible services.
Some online financial services websites provide personal financial management applications. Personal financial management applications are useful tools for managing personal finances is a personal financial management software application. Personal finance software applications (including online applications) allow a user to organize and track their personal finances. As examples, Quicken® is a desktop and online personal finance software application, available from Intuit Inc., Mountain View, Calif., and Mint® is an online application (See the website “mint.com”).
Some online financial services websites include a personal financial management application, in addition to the other online services such as account review and performing account transactions. The personal financial management application may be separate or integrated with the other functionality of the financial services website. An example of an online personal financial management system provided as an online banking service is FinanceWorks™ provided by Intuit Financial Services, a unit of Intuit Inc., of Mountain View, Calif. FinanceWorks™ allows a user to download financial data from numerous financial institutions from a single website, and then analyzes and organizes the data and provides the financial management functions described above for personal finance applications. Such personal finance applications can perform financial management functions such as managing and paying bills, tracking and managing investments, performing budgeting tasks, viewing and printing summaries and reports, preparing and printing expense reports, writing checks, paying bills with checks or online. The applications can download banking, financial and billing data directly from banks, companies, and financial institutions through a secure internet connection. The applications can create a financial profile of the user in which users can review their financial “picture,” review spending and saving habits, create budgets and spending and saving goals, calculate gains and losses on investments, and have reminders set to emphasize dates on which bills or other obligations are to be paid.
Current financial services websites which are enabled to access and manage multiple accounts of a user provide a list of accounts for the user to review and to choose from for reviewing and/or performing some activity. Presently, the account lists are only static and typically list the accounts in order by account number, alphabetically, or grouped by account type (such as credit card accounts, bank accounts, investment accounts, etc.). Thus, the account list displayed to the user generally has no relationship to which accounts are likely to be of most interest to the user, or most likely for the user to access and perform some activity.
While these online personal finance management services and financial services websites provide many conveniences, there are enhancements that can be made to improve them.